The Elephant Principle
by plotbunnydoom
Summary: Most people have insomnia on occasion. This doesn't mean Ban has to accept it or his wandering thoughts gracefully.


I'm sorry if the formatting is strange. refers you to big neon sign over head that reads "NEW"

I haven't written fanfiction for, er, about five years. So I'm a bit rusty. Reviews/comments/critiques much appreciated.

* * *

Ban couldn't sleep.

Some people might say this was to be expected. He and Ginji were, after all, sleeping in a small car. Failing that, one might say it was because of Ginji's snoring. And failing even that, one could point to the many horrors and traumas he had experienced and seen in his short life. They would all be wrong, though. Ban couldn't sleep simply because his body was refusing to do so.

He _hated_ insomnia.

He groaned and tried turning over, letting his mind drift. He wondered how many spots were on a regulation football; if he could shield his fingernails from Natsumi's newfound obsession with nail polish; if Akabane would show up on their next mission and attempt to slice them to small ribbons (oh, now there was a sleep-inducing thought).

He resisted to temptation to sit up and check their surroundings, firmly telling himself that Akabane, unlike the devil, would not come when thought about.

He hoped, anyway. Try explaining that to Ginji—'I thought about him and he popped up. Sorry.' Ginji would never allow him to have a thought of his own again for fear of the bastard catching it. Ban groaned internally at the thought. It was hard enough hearing his own thoughts through Ginji's incessant, cheerful chatter. Not that he usually minded it, but sometimes a little silence could be a good thing.

Ginji murmured something in his sleep and cast a hand out, giving Ban a nasty shock with the contact. He wondered what his partner was dreaming about. Ginji seemed to be sleeping fairly calmly, so he probably wasn't dreaming about a big battle or having a nightmare. Maybe he was dreaming of fighting over food. Or girls. Ban's rather uncharitable thought about that (and he could afford to be uncharitable, since the bastard had just shocked any trace of sleep out of him) was that dreams were the only places Ginji would be getting any of either.

This line of thinking brought the interesting question to mind if Ginji _could_ even get anywhere with a girl without shocking her to death. A master of impulse control Ginji was not. Ban had seen what happened when Ginji got excited or angry, and it involved a lot of electricity. It'd take a pretty tough girl. Himiko, perhaps? Nah. Hevn? Definitely not.

Actually he couldn't think of any girls at all that could withstand Ginji. Poor guy was never going to get laid if he didn't learn some damn fine control over his abilities.

Well… that wasn't strictly true, his traitorous brain told him. He could think of people, just not _girls_.

There were random musings and there were musings that flashed in big neon letters "_I don't want to go there!"_ This was definitely getting into the latter. Ban told his brain to quit it and to think about something else, preferably something more sleep-inducing.

It didn't, of course. It was the elephant principle—if you told yourself not to think about elephants, then all you were going to think about would be elephants. Blonde elephants with ridiculous fashion sense and…

Kazuki was practically a girl, his mind helpfully informed him. No, he just couldn't see that happening; Kazuki had too much caught up in Juubei. Not that he was thinking or even had thought about that either.

Ban whacked his forehead in an effort to distract himself. It didn't work.

Shido had Madoka, thank god, he didn't have to think about that. Emishi was just too… ridiculous. He had been starting to get the sneaking, paranoid suspicion that Akabane was hitting on Ginji in his own special way (oh no, another thing he'd firmly not been thinking about) but at least he had the happy comfort of knowing that was one thing that'd never happen. Ginji had better taste and was terrified of him anyway.

Raitei, though… no, Raitei probably wasn't interested in sex.

So that only left Ban himself. And like hell that was going to happen. So okay, maybe he'd had a couple of uncomfortable dreams, but dreams were just that, dreams, and it probably was to be expected because they spent so much time together and a million other rationalizations he knew he had thought of.

"Ban-chan?"

Ban almost jumped through the sunroof.

Ginji blinked at him. "Are you okay? You were making this awful expression, I thought maybe you were having a bad dream."

"Uh… yeah." Ban cursed himself. That hadn't been a very good lie and Ginji almost always saw right through those.

Ginji yawned. "I was having this really strange dream about you…" He stopped and looked at Ban curiously. "Are you sure you're okay? You're making this weird face at me."

"Yeah, I'm fine," Ban said weakly.

"So I was dreaming that we had this retrieval that was hidden underwater and then a pack of electric eels came in on us, and it looked like they were, you know, hungry, but you said that if I used my electricity then they'd just think we were other eels…" Ginji trailed off, stretching, and yawned again. "Night again, Ban-chan. Don't have any more bad dreams." He shut his eyes.

Ban stared at Ginji's peacefully sleeping face for another few minutes, thinking more uncomfortable thoughts. Finally yawning himself he sat up, checked thoroughly around their car for Akabane, and drifted off to sleep.


End file.
